The moon a few minutes ago from Hokkaido. 🔭

Dear Santa, this is what I want for Xmas! citizenbrick.com/collections/...

The moon, Saturn and the International Space Station lined up between the trees just now. Hokkaido, Japan. 🔭

The moon is looking beautiful this evening. 🔭

New pinhole Solargraph! This one was in place for a week. Had a few really sunny days and then lots of cloud. Am I going to do a month long and year long one? You’d better believe it! 🔭 ☀️

My best picture of Jupiter yet with my homemade 114mm Dobsonian telescope. Also Europa below and Io and Ganymede above. So cool to see cloud bands on another planet! 🔭

I made a pinhole solargraph with an aluminium drink can, some black tape, a pin and a sheet of ILFORD photographic paper. This image shows the path of the Sun over the course of a day and the trees in front of my house. 🔭 🌞

I very luckily captured a shooting star as I was taking a picture of Orion with my iPhone! 10 second exposure, iPhone 16Pro. Hokkaido, Japan. 🔭

My first picture of Jupiter and the 4 Galilean moons with the homemade telescope and some moon pictures. All taken with the 17mm eyepiece and 2xbarlow. 🔭

The moon a few minutes ago taken from Hokkaido, Japan with my homemade budget 114mm Dobsonian and an iPhone. 🔭

Tonight’s moon grabbed between clouds with my homemade budget telescope and an iPhone. 🔭

I built a ¥3,000 (US$20) solar projector telescope with some cheap lenses from AliExpress and some scrap ply. My image of the Sun isn’t quite as clear as the one from the NASA SOHO spacecraft (3rd picture in case you weren’t sure) but it was much less expensive! This was a fun little project! 🔭 🌞

I got to see and photograph the Pleiades last night with my homemade telescope. I was able to match up all the stars named in the free version of Stellarium and captured a bunch more too! I think the purple spot is a reflection from the eyepiece of the iPhone laser rangefinder. 🔭

I’m so happy to get this image of Saturn a few minutes ago with my homemade 114mm Dobsonian and an iPhone 16 pro held to the eyepiece! 🔭

I got this Obi-Wan Kenobi 20 Years of LEGO minifigure along with another purchase on eBay. I didn’t want to take it out of the bag but I did want to build it so I put it together in the unopened bag. The lightsaber was the hardest bit to get in place! #lego

This evenings moon from Hokkaido, Japan. I’m still blown away with how much I can see with my budget home made telescope. I used the night cap app instead of the normal camera app and I think it gives better results. I also got my best ever view of Saturn but it was impossible to photograph. 🔭

A while back someone posted an image of Popular Science magazine from January 1928. I was able to find a copy online (for a crazy price!) and it’s just arrived. It’s even more beautiful in real life and there are some fascinating articles! I don’t remember who posted about it but thank you! 🔭

I didn’t stay up to 3am to see the lunar eclipse last night but I did get to see some lovely views of the moon before I went to bed. 🔭

Help me Astronomy people. Has anyone ever used a live remote telescope to give a talk to school students? I’ve never used a remote telescope before but I thought it would be really great to show live views even though it’s daytime where we are. Not sure how feasible this is? 🔭

My new 3I/ATLAS t-shirt just arrived! 🔭 💫

It’s so beautiful! HDSP-2531 display full of retro-futuristic ’70’s goodness!

Tonight’s moon and Saturn. Not the best picture of Saturn you’ve seen but not bad for an iPhone held up to a homemade cardboard tube and scrap plywood telescope! It was amazing to see it through the eyepiece. Wish I could get a better picture. 🔭

I made a little movie player for an ESP32.

Tonight’s moon from Hokkaido, Japan with my homemade budget telescope. 🔭

Day 2 of building a canoe. Today was just tracing out the 13 stations onto tracing paper ready to make patterns.

It is time to start building another boat.

Getting some minifigs together for a diorama.

I reworked my 3I/ATLAS t-shirt to be a little more subtle. If you know, you know. This is the colour I’ll be wearing! Japonica.online 🔭

I made a few of these stellar proximity detectors a while back. It gives you a visual indication if you are within a couple AU’s of a G-type star. It may work with other star types but I haven’t had a chance to test it yet. planetary bodies between you and the star may cause a false negative. 🔭

I’m so excited about 3I/ATLAS I made a T-Shirt and Mug. If you want one they are for sale on my site japonica.online. 🔭

Great evening looking at the moon and M13 with my son. It’s a lot easier taking pictures now the scope has a base but I still didn’t get a clear shot of M13. 🔭

I put these up a while back and almost no one bought any. I’ll leave them online for another week and then they’ll make space for something new. Japonica.online and 20% discount code “bluesky” if you do want to grab a shirt, mug or poster. You’ll be helping to fund my next telescope project! 🔭

She might be a heap of junk but she’ll capture photons from more than 780,000 parsecs away. 🔭

Over the weekend my son and I finished building our very rough, very budget telescope. This evening was the first night it’s been clear. We took it out and set it up and I wondered how disappointing it might be for him after seeing so many amazing pictures from Hubble, James Webb, NASA etc. … 🔭

Took me long enough but I finally finished my NASA/ukiyo-e inspired planets series. T-Shirts, Mugs and Posters are online now at japonica.online Special offer for my fellow Astronomers - if you buy something in the store you can suggest your favourite minor planet or asteroid to do next! 🔭 ✨

My National Parks of Japan mugs and T-Shirts are now live on the japonica.online store. I didn’t want to put them out there until the samples had arrived and had gone through the wash a few times. I’m really happy with how they’ve turned out.

Thinking of making a full set of these? Anyone interested in a Japanese planet T-Shirt or mug? 🔭 🌏 ✨

I made this little cube that tells you what satellites are flying overhead right now. Uses a QtPy ESP32, SD card reader, BN280 gps, SSD1306 OLED. Downloads the latest orbital elements file once a day from Celestrak and then calculates the orbits and lets you know what’s up! 🔭🛰️

Pretty happy with this picture taken with an iPhone and my home made telescope this evening. Still haven’t made a stand for it so it’s a bit of a juggling act to get pictures. 🔭

Putting together a set of logos for Japan’s 35 National Parks in the style of the classic U.S. National Parks logos. Follow me if you’re interested. Here are a few Hokkaido ones.

Probably one of the less impressive images of the moon you’ve ever seen but I’m very proud of this as it’s the first image captured with the budget telescope I’ve been building with my son. Made with a cardboard tube and a cheap AliExpress mirror. Haven’t built a base yet but this is first light! 🔭

Saturn has 128 newly-discovered moons. Here they are color-coded by their MPEC release. Orange: MPEC 2025 E153, Purple: MPEC 2025-E154, Green: MPEC 2025-E155.

When negative sightings are taken into account the impact risk rises to around 6%! Nice!

New asteroid is a 3 on the Torino scale. And it might stay there for a while… ☄️🔭 earthsky.org/space/astero...

Mars, Jupiter, Orion and the Pleiades over Mount Yotei in Hokkaido, Japan last night. iPhone 15pro.

@bot.astronomy.blue signup

The road to my house yesterday.

Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #2,960,065!

Jupiter Moons device. QtPy board, GPS board and SSD1306 OLED. Shows current position of Jupiter and the 4 Galilean moons. Code on GitHub - github.com/OkuboHeavyIn...

Swallow. Inspired by reading Swallows and Amazons with my sone. A Chesapeake Light Craft Skerry I built a couple of years ago. She’s a fantastic little sailing boat and we’ve had a ton of fun sailing her.